In an appearance before Congress on March 9, Education Secretary Arne Duncan may have sounded the death knell for NCLB, or at least the stupid parts of it. He told Congress that 82 percent of America’s schools could fail to meet education goals set by No Child Left Behind this year.

He went on to say that NCLB it is broken and Congress needs to fix it now. A quote from Duncan: “This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk.”

It is refreshing to hear some common sense being injected into the debate about our school systems. His thoughts on NCLB, however, are not in any way new to anyone in the K-12 education field who took the time to look at the requirements.

At the small school district where the Eduskeptic taught Kindergarten for 24 years, we regularly devoted time during staff meetings to dissect the numbers that were generated by the testing we did. The grade levels at our school were K-4. Other schools in other districts across the U.S. did the same.

The results of the testing were plotted on a graph against the NCLB requirements. The NCLB trajectory line was a known factor, projected out to the end when everyone was expected to be at the proficient level. Defeating the bell curve, it is important to note, isn’t remotely possible.

What we could see was that during the first few years of NCLB the upward trajectory was pretty mild. Around about now, the line shot up. The requirements for success were much more difficult to meet.

Our children always did very well, overall. When we found problems we tackled them head on. We changed strategies, methods, materials to effect a positive change. Grade levels were very blunt about what needed to be done by other grade levels to reach the goals. No one, except maybe the Eduskeptic, wanted to be taken over by the Feds. The Eduskeptic thought it would be interesting to have them take over as soon as possible, just to show us how things were really supposed to be done.

What we could see was pretty simple. The federal trajectory of expectations was impossible to catch after a certain point. The Eduskeptic isn’t especially mathematically inclined, but he did some simple projections to find out whether our students test scores could make the rapid upward tick that kicks in now.

Just to make sure, the Eduskeptic checked with a colleague, another Kindergarten teacher who is a math whiz, about his data. My reasoning and methods were correct. Over one morning recess, the reality of this catch 22 was confirmed by my colleague. There was simply no possible way, using our available data, to project a line that would meet the NCLB requirements. None. Zero. Barring a wholesale import of 100% genius level elementary students, we would fail.

Secretary Duncan is absolutely correct in his assessment of NCLB. It offers no way to win. There was, and is, only the very real probability that no matter what a school did, sooner or later it would fall into the failed category.

It is almost impossible to imagine that at least 82% of the schools in the United States are actually failing to adequately educate their students. While this may fit into the political sloganeering of some groups, it’s not real. NCLB simply projected a goal that had absolutely no basis in fact, and then proclaimed that not meeting the goal meant that schools were failing. It is, by any standard, absurd.

There is always room for improvement in any school system. The focus must be on how to improve rather than how to blame and punish. Whatever perceived good that NCLB was supposed to offer is more than offset by the damage done by failing to present any reasonable way to succeed.

Secretary Duncan is right. The Eduskeptic hopes that Congress listens and acts accordingly.